


In Neat Little Boxes

by rui



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Canonical Character Death, Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-26
Updated: 2014-03-26
Packaged: 2018-01-17 02:07:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1369954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rui/pseuds/rui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison has become a private thing to her, a grief so deep and cold that Lydia only dared unpack it in solitude. </p><p>It seems almost unfair that Isaac, of all people, is the one who saw through her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Neat Little Boxes

**Author's Note:**

> There was a scene at the end of the season finale, where Kira was talking to Lydia as though she hadn't just lost her best friend, and it made me think. This is what came out of that.

Isaac stands at the corner near Lydia’s locker, waiting. He’s waiting for her to finish exchanging her science textbooks for English. He’s waiting because she’s talking to Kira, because Kira is asking Lydia for advice and Isaac is pretending that he can’t hear her talking about giving Scott the space he needs, how hard this has been for them, about how she wishes she knew how to help. He’s waiting until Lydia gently brushes Kira off because Kira has math next. He’s waiting until she walks by. 

“Hey.” It’s soft, and Isaac doesn’t move, but Lydia stops, turns slowly to look at him. 

“Yes?” A perfectly manicured eyebrow reaches for the elegant sweep of her bangs. Isaac remembers when that was intimidating. It feels like a long time ago. 

“You wanna, I donno, get coffee after school?” 

Lydia lifts her head to look him full in the face. “Are you asking me out?” 

“Coffee isn’t _out_.” Isaac rolls his eyes, and Lydia’s lips tighten.

“Well. Fine.” Her eyes sweep over him, and Isaac isn’t sure whether he believes that expression that says he’s found wanting anymore. Maybe he just doesn’t care. “I’ll drive.” 

“Kay,” he says, and walks away. She watches him go, head tilted in confusion. What could Isaac Lahey possibly want? 

***

There’s something particular about the noise of coffee shops, the clatter of cups on tables and fingers on keyboards, the low murmur of chatter under the rattle of the espresso machine and the piped in hipster music. Lydia finds it soothing, in a bourgeoisie, fake-pretentious sort of way. More importantly, it’s the kind of background noise that masks the susurrus in the back of her mind. Sometimes, she just doesn’t want to care that someone is dying. Someone is always, always dying.

Lydia orders something terribly complicated and only halfway coffee, which makes Isaac’s eyes roll and is expensive enough that he’s left having to order black for himself. He finds a table in the corner, by the window, and they sit. Lydia presses her knees together, presses her lips together. She doesn’t really know why she’s here, why she agreed to this at all. The fact that they sit for several moments in silence doesn’t help.

“Look.” Isaac’s voice startles her with its suddenness. “I know everyone’s forgotten that you lost her too.” He looks up from his cup, from where his fingers trace the whorl of the grain of the table. “I haven’t forgotten.” 

“Oh,” Lydia says, aware that her mouth is still open, that it isn’t quite closing. Her eyes are very wide, almost frightened, and Isaac only manages to look at her for another moment before his gaze drops to the table again. Isaac, Lydia’s brain informs her, has never been particularly good with eye contact, preferring to look at people when they weren’t looking directly back, but he has become measurably worse since...since. Her brain informs her of this while her hands push her away from the table and her knees straighten to propel her out of her chair, and she stumbles through the door and out into the sunshine, away from those eyes. She needs to remember to breathe, to be silent and still.

 _Everyone’s forgotten that you lost her too._ Of course they had, because that was what Lydia had intended. Allison has become a private thing to her, a grief so deep and cold that Lydia only dared unpack it in solitude. She had tried, she had tried so hard to keep that scream in, had swallowed it down a dozen times and more, had kept it in her throat until she felt it happen, until there was no point anymore, until there was nothing to do but scream. 

She felt it happen.

It seems almost unfair that Isaac, of all people, is the one who saw through her. Scott is wrapped in his pain, Stiles in his guilt, Kira in her sweet, oblivious concern. But Isaac, it occurs to her with sudden, terrible clarity, Isaac understands. Brutish, unhelpful Isaac is the one who has lost everything that ever mattered to him, and never let anyone notice. He’s the one who fell in love, not with the sweet, unsure transfer student Lydia had taken under her wing, but the girl who stabbed him twenty times with ring daggers and never even thought about apologizing. They’ve all forgotten him, too, just like they’ve forgotten Lydia, but it’s not the same careful artifice. He let it happen because it never would have occurred to him to expect anything else. All the pieces slot neatly into place, and suddenly she’s looking at a part of the puzzle that she didn’t realize was there because it doesn’t fit with all the rest.

It all happened so fast. It happened so fast that even Lydia never noticed. 

The tinkle of the bell on the door startles her and then there’s a hand on her shoulder, tentative and warm. Isaac’s squinting down at Lydia a little like she’s a bomb, like she might go off at any second, like he’s bracing for shrapnel. Instead, she slowly leans into him, careful not to fuss her hair or smudge her makeup. After a long moment, he wraps his arms around her the way one might wrap their arms around a rosebush, anticipating thorns.

“Well, Isaac,” she informs his cardigan, “you aren’t as dumb as you look.” 

He scoffs. “Thanks, I think,” he says, and she wraps her arms around his back, and holds on.


End file.
